One of the things that I find really troubling is that the "powers that be" have defined morality as the "gay issue", and anti-abortion movement and repeating the name God over and over. I am a religious person and the ideas of "blessed are the poor", we are all equal in the sight of God,and "blessed are the peacemakers" are what I take from my religious training.

I think we need to get more active in advocacy for the poor. In this election the poor seemed to be the forgotten people. Often we vigil where I am against the war and we have many religious as well as non-religious people with us. I try to have things on my sign that reach out to those beyond the choir ie. "blessed are the peacemakers" or the Pope's statement on the Iraq war as a mistake of humanity. We have many Catholics where I live. When we had a walk to bring up issues before the election called the "Return the Light to America" walk we were formulating slogans and some of our best peace activists had trouble with Pro-Choice as a slogan. We had Code Pink members as part of the coalition as well so we compromised and had the slogan support women's rights. All could agree on that general statement and each was free to give out their own literature on the walk. We were able to work together.

We must not allow the right to define morality. Is stealing people's pension money that they worked for all their life morality etc. The only way we can contend however is to get out publicly and on the internet with pro-people definitions of reality that they carefully leave out.

Excellent points, tearsfromastar. With all of the words about the poor in the Bible, shouldn't Christians be upset that during the election the poor were hardly discussed? (The last time I remember someone brought it up without prompting was John Edwards during a Democratic debate, although I'm sure that there were other mentions here and there.) More of an emphasis on the poor would be more inspiring and would appeal to many of the nonreligious. Besides which the "Christian Right" would find difficulty in responding because they cannot deny the words of the Bible.

We have to get over this one hurdle: conservatives--especially fundies, as a group, are obsessed with sex. So much so that their nosiness about what's going on in other people's bedrooms trump the love of God and love of neighbor (in terms of actual Christian charity). Their public displays of "moral values" belie their private behavior--in spades!

When I hear a con obsess over the sex lives of others, right away I wonder what sexual skeletons are in his or her closet. We hear of numerous reports of anti-gay fundies caught in homosexual sex scandals; of anti-abortion zealots caught molesting teenage girls or making their mistresses get abortions to hide affairs from their wives; of "family values" Repubs exposed as serial adulterers or with kiddie porn. Worse yet, these outrageous examples of hypocrisy are covered up by the mainstream corporate media, so Americans are kept in the dark until it's too late for them to change their minds and votes.